


i can taste you slipping

by roselatte



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-26
Updated: 2018-07-26
Packaged: 2019-06-16 07:19:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15431871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roselatte/pseuds/roselatte
Summary: Two conversations during and after Ronan dreams the shitbox fix.(For Pynch Week Day 4 ; Death)





	i can taste you slipping

**Author's Note:**

> i think i'm posting this a day late but idk, things here always post weird for me.

 

_during.—_

Adam presses the back of his head against the side of the BMW. The fear should have left by now because Ronan is fine, this isn’t like last time.

 _This isn’t like last time,_ Adam repeats in his mind like a mantra that does nothing to convince him.

What it does do is bring up last time. The horror of it is cutting and fresh in his mind. Why does this Ronan stay so clear to him, when he has so many others to remember? He has the Ronan who he wakes up next to in the morning, with sleepy blue eyes and not sharp smiles. He has the Ronan who kisses his hands and looks at him with an emotion Adam knows he reflects back. He has the Ronan covered in flour and pancake batter, the Ronan who’s sly and exasperated, the Ronan who’s expression sometimes breaks his heart and other times makes it soar.

Those images blur and fade, and replace themselves every day, new and bright, or sometimes just new. The image of Ronan’s spine curving unnaturally, his eyes screwed shut, his skin pulled taut with smears of black running down has stayed as insidious and painful as the day it happened.

Adam opens his eyes because keeping them closed now beckons that eager, jagged image forth. Opal stands by the nose of the car, fidgeting with a receipt, her eyes flickering between him and Ronan.

He holds his hand out to her and she runs to him, grabbing it. She presses it to her cheek and Adam swallows down a lump in his throat.

“This is what you call fucked,” she says, unprompted.

“It is,” Adam agrees, “and you’re mopping the floors tomorrow for saying that.” Which means Adam and Ronan will have to do the floors after, as anything Opal cleans somehow ends up messier than before.

Adam is furiously happy he’ll be cleaning the floors with Ronan tomorrow.

“You were brave Opal,” he tells her.

He means it but it's not what he wants to say. He wants to say  _how long did you know this, why didn’t you say something, how do I keep him safe, what else do you know, tell me because he won’t._ But how can he say any of that when she looks so petulant and so eight years old?

Opal’s scowl eases and she thinks hard, though that might just be her face, Adam can never tell. “Yes,” she finally agrees, “but now you’re going to leave.”

The lump returns to Adam’s throat, spiky and angry. “Not for a while longer, and I told you I’m coming back. Have I lied to you?”

She hesitates. “No.”

“So what’s with the face?”

Opal kicks at the dirt. “You’ll like it better, where you’re going.”

“How?” Adam pulls his hand away from her cheek and pinches her nose. “You’re not going to be there.”

She squawks and flaps at his hand until he pulls it away. “You will like it better,” she insists, “here it’s just Kerah and his sad dreams.”

Adam gets the distinct feeling that she’s not only talking about what just happened. “So what? I need him.”

The words catch as they spill out of his mouth, but they don’t vanish, fall apart, stumble, like they used to. He allows this one need to be at home in his chest; Ronan needs him too.

“I need him,” Opal says sharply and Adam remembers she’s childlike but objectively not always a child. He forgets this again as she trembles over her next words. “I know I’ll die without him. Will you?”

Something is off about the way Opal says this. Adam tucks it away for when his mind isn’t full of cotton and needles.

“Not in the same way as you,” he answers. There’s a hot-flash moment where Adam’s lungs fill with water and this is about the most he can think of Ronan dying.

Adam turns and reaches for Ronan, presses a hand to his neck and his relief is the beat of Ronan’s pulse. He looks back to Opal and pulls her hands into both of his. "Come on, what’s really wrong?”

Her face scrunches up. “Why do humans die? Why will you and Kerah die and stay dead?”

“Oh, Opal.” He pulls her to him and she goes willingly, burying her face into his shoulder.

“What if you die and never come back?”

“That won’t happen.”

“How do you know?” Opal’s voice cracks in a very human way and Adam wants to protect her so much.

“You know those women who came up here a while back?”

“Psychics,” Opal says immediately.

“Yeah. I’m like them, so I just know these things.” Adam hopes this is the truth.

She seems to accept this, and is quiet for so long Adam assumes the conversation is done, and then with her voice muffled on his jacket, she asks, “what if Kerah dies and you’re not there?”

Words pile up in his throat behind the spiky lump. Adam wonders how he can explain to this childlike not-child who is a child to him that it’s not possible for him to think about this. He can’t, so he asks, “Is what happened today...it’s not like before, is it?”

“It was slow,” Opal struggles to explain, “I didn’t really feel it. I felt it a little.”

It was a yes or no question, and Opal’s answer is far enough from yes that Adam’s worry intensifies.

“Then I’ll be able to stop it before it gets bad,” Adam reassures, both himself and her. He pushes her back gently but keeps his hands firm on her shoulders. “We’re going to be fine. And you’re going to be safe.”

He desperately doesn’t want to talk about this anymore, and Opal, perhaps sensing it, nods. He thinks she’s done talking now, Adam has never heard her speak so much English before.

“You’re brave too,” she says, and now she’s done.

Nothing Adam feels right now can be associated with bravery, but he touches a hand lightly to her forehead in thanks anyway. Adam leans back against the BMW again, and Opal settles on the ground next to him. Ronan’s foot pokes out and Adam suppresses the urge to push it in. He doesn’t close his eyes, because that image is still prowling in his mind. Instead, he tries to untangle his feelings from the concept of Ronan dying so he can figure something out. He needs to figure something out.

It’s impossible. Ronan’s foot shifts.

“Adam?”

 

_after.—_

 

"You’re a real asshole.”

For not telling him about Cabeswater, for not telling him about not dreaming, for not telling him anything. For terrifying him.

“Fucking hell.” Ronan’s voice carries from the dining room and Adam searches faster; he wants Ronan in his sight. “How many times do I need to apologize?”

“You only apologized once.” Adam shuts a cabinet with more force than necessary. “And we need a plan.”

“You and your plans,” Ronan grumbles as if he isn’t fully dependent on Adam’s plans.

Adam finally finds another poorly folded towel in the cupboard and runs it under some warm water. When Adam brings it out of the kitchen, Ronan eyes the towel like it’s demonic.

“I bet you rubbed off ten layers of skin,” Ronan complains, mutinous, but doesn’t move as Adam presses the towel repeatedly over parts of his face. After each press, Adam pulls the towel back to check for any remaining dark smudges until Ronan taps a finger to Adam’s wrist.

“I think I’m good now,” he says evenly.

Adam adds the towel to a pile next to a large bowl. He avoids looking at the bowl. He cups Ronan’s face and turns it this way and that, brushing his thumbs over his cheekbones and then his temple. He goes through this ritual three times, maybe seven, and Ronan watches him carefully. Not very satisfied, Adam at last steps back.

He rubs his knuckles against the table and counts each notch and ridge they pass over. “I’m angry.” But angry isn’t quite right. “Frustrated,” Adam corrects, “it’s always something, isn’t it?”

Ronan’s face twists in a way Adam can’t read. “Maybe you shouldn’t come back,” he says, the same way he said _fuck that, you’re going_.

It is out of pure resolve that Adam does not sway. He doesn’t trust the resolve to last though, so he roughly drags a chair around and drops into it.

Ronan continues, “Declan still comes often enough, and he can pick up Opal. I know he does shit up near your campus so—”

“Stop.” Adam is sharp if only to not be pathetic. If Ronan keeps going he’ll have to find out how much detail has gone into this. From the fragment he’s had the misfortune of hearing, it feels like Ronan put a lot of detail into this and it _feels bad._

“You’re seriously trying to break up with me.” Adam exhales a harsh breath. “Do you think I don’t love you, after almost a year? After everything? Or,” Adam’s voice rises, “do you think you love me more? Because this isn’t honorable, or whatever. You’re not doing any favors, Lynch.”

Rationality is bleeding out from multiple stab wounds and Adam stands again, not from resolve but from fear, because fear is all he is made of today. There was a time Adam could deal with several unbearable things at once, now he’s hardly dealing with one.

A silence dips treacherously between them. Adam’s want to say something, anything, to turn this conversation onto a different path but his mind just jumps between the blackness that crawled down Ronan’s chin and _maybe you shouldn’t come back._

“Adam,” Ronan says, raw and wrecked.

Adam’s fear goes still.

Ronan takes Adam’s hands, and with it, he takes some of the fear too.

The silence threatens to grow too full again, and then Ronan breaks it with a shaky breath.

“I’m really fucking scared, okay? I’m scared I won’t get Cabeswater right and Opal won’t think it’s home. I’m scared I won’t wake up all the dream shit and I’m scared I won’t make Matthew stop being a dream.” Ronan closes his eyes, to keep at least one part of him closed. “I’m scared you’re in danger if we’re together.”

Adam presses his forehead to Ronan’s. Ronan steals a kiss, and he steals some of the fear too.

“Am I selfish?” Adam asks in a rough whisper. “I don’t care about the danger and I don’t care if it’s hard for you or hard for me. I want to solve all of those problems with you. I want you to be the first to know when I make Dean’s List.” In a softer murmur, he asks again, “is that selfish?”

“I’m the one who’s selfish.” Ronan’s voice thrums low over Adam’s lips. “But I care about the danger. Adam, if something happens to me—”

Adam cuts him off with a kiss, hard and sloppy. “It’s going to mess me up if something happens to you.” He kisses Ronan again. “The plan is nothing happens to you.”

“That’s a shitty plan,” Ronan protests between more kisses, “That’s shittier than my plan.”

“Yours wasn’t a plan,” Adam says, clipped and fierce. “And it’s never going to be a plan, not for me.”

“Okay.” Ronan runs his hands soothingly up and down Adam’s arms.

Adam considers the dining chair behind him, and then, in an act of sheer determination, maneuvers himself into Ronan’s lap. The chair creaks ominously.

“We’re calling each other every day,” Adam says. “During my breaks, and the video calls at night.”

“Yes, Parrish, we talked about this.”

“I want pictures.”

“Got it. Nudes.”

Adam sees no reason to argue this. “And texts. Text me anything you find. I’ll text you what I find.”

“We talked about this,” Ronan repeats. His kisses the side of Adam’s head. “I’m sacrificing my principles for you.”

Adam smiles half-heartedly into Ronan’s neck. “I’m serious. You have to tell me, I need to get back here if things are bad.”

“Okay,” Ronan says, but Adam feels Ronan’s jaw tighten over his head.

There is a hollowness to that _okay._ Ronan still hides his secrets under his skin.

One of Ronan’s hands trace patterns on the side of Adam’s thigh but the other comes up to rest against his head as if Ronan could tell Adam would try to pull back and look at him.

A sick feeling rises in him and Adam presses his face closer into Ronan’s neck. “Ronan, I just won’t go. I won’t go if you don’t promise to tell me.”

When will they get to the part of the relationship where there are no more secrets?

“I said _okay,_ Parrish. Make sure you don’t spend all your time doing magic shit so you can win you nerd medals.”

Adam shifts and Ronan’s arms fall away. Squeezing into a dining chair with him was not Adam’s smartest decision and Ronan is smirking by the time he manages to get up.

“Shut up,” Adam says, pulling Ronan up.

“I didn’t say anything.”

Adam pulls Ronan’s hands around him and they settle low on his hips. He takes Ronan in, the subtlety of his breathing, the movement in his eyes, the color in his face. Ronan kisses him, kind and without intention.

“I’m sorry,” Ronan says. “For earlier. That was a dick move.”

This conversation, Adam knows, will not be ending tonight. It won’t end for a long time, because Adam won’t cut Ronan to get to his secrets and Ronan won’t easily let them surface. But there was a time a conversation like this wouldn’t have gotten this far without someone slamming a door. Adam is always so caught up in loving Ronan, he never considers how far they’ve come.

Adam drags his hands up Ronan’s arms and loops them around his neck.

“Hm. Not accepted.” He kisses Ronan with intention. “You can apologize upstairs.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> title is from lover, please stay by nothing but thieves


End file.
